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Futurama Reviews: S10E01 -"Destroy Tall Monsters"

I’m not a fan of the way Hulu chose to release this season of Futurama all at once. The binge model isn’t really what it once was –Netflix is pretty much the only company still dependent on it. Shows don’t last so long in public consciousness under the model, especially if they are not promoted to begin with. And at this stage releasing the tenth season of Futurama in this format bodes ill for the series’ sustained future. This season is the first of a two-season renewal the show got last year, but if this release structure is any indication, I don’t think the series will be picked up for more episodes after 2026.
Such is the eternal pattern of Futurama and after this latest season premiere I can’t help wonder if that is for the best –as it is certainly one of the better candidates one could point to of the show losing steam. Blatantly not a good choice to kick off the season with.
Bender has had several arbitrary identity crises over the years, whether around his faith, his fear of death, his capacity for free will –but his height feels like an especially lame one, and a lame central theme for an episode that largely feels like an excuse to build to a climax where Bender is a kaiju –something that the show has essentially done twice already, first in “Anthology of Interest I” and then again in “Benderama”. I guess writer David X. Cohen thought it was time to do that premise literally (as the prior instances were a fantasy sequence and a collective nanobot creation respectively), but nothing very new or interesting is gleaned by that.
Backing up, this story begins with Bender going to the Robot Devil’s club with Fry and Leela and discovers upon trying to hit on a celebrity robot called Barbot that he has been short all this time. She and her entourage (including Joey Mousepad) barely notice Bender for being out of their line of sight, and all of sudden other robots are starting to comment on Bender’s height. Apart from just being a dull conceit of a character beat, it’s just bizarrely inconsistent and borderline gaslighting with regard to series’ history. Bender isn’t short. He’s more or less the same height as the rest of the main cast (perhaps a touch taller due to the antenna) and the same is true compared to most other robots encountered through the series. Never has there been any indication he is shorter than the average robot or that this is a major judgement or prejudice among robots. It’s a little bit like “Stench and Stenchibility” honing in on Zoidberg’s smell as his most repulsive quality when no one had commented exclusively on that before. This works even less.
A dispirited Bender after shunning the somewhat backhanded advice of Bubblegum Tate, approaches the Robot Devil –who at least calls out the number of times Bender has sold his soul, and instead offers him merely D-roids, a robot equivalent of steroids. Naturally, Bender takes a lot of them and soon towers over his co-workers, abusing his new height in every way he can think of –mostly amounting to a laundry list of non-sequitur annoyances the writing staff must have with tall people (they didn’t seem like particularly pointed stereotypes). Of course Bender also parlays his new height into dating Barbot, herself nothing more than a superficial dumb starlet stereotype.
In the meantime, an even thinner subplot concerns Fry and Leela in a minor snag of their relationship, disagreeing on how similar they are in taste and temperament. This too feels strangely divorced from the series’ pre-established contexts that demonstrate on several counts the differences in their personalities. But it’s all waved away for a threadbare conflict that I suppose sort of sets up their actions in the third act in a very weak way. But it doesn’t come close to justifying itself. Fry and Leela are main characters, they need to be doing something around Bender’s story –but there had to be a better idea than this.
Barbot is acting in a Godzeebo kaiju movie and Bender becomes jealous when she starts showing interest in her tall monster co-star and then a tennis ball perched high on a stick (evidently she is programmed to be attracted to height), so Bender downs the rest of his D-roids and becomes a giant, causing terror in downtown New New York with Barbot his Ann Darrow. The Professor’s plan to stop Bender involves summoning the real monster Godzuko to fight him, while Fry and Leela are tasked with entering Bender’s body and taking control –ultimately building to a Pacific Rim situation where they use their natural harmony to control him, defeating Godzuko and the very purpose of summoning him in the first place. Amy points this out as the mayor venerates Bender for ‘saving the city’ that Bender was actually the bad guy who started the chaos. As has been stated before, lampshading is no excuse for poor plotting. Everything returns to normal with the D-roids wearing off and Bender taking new stock in his overconfidence, no longer concerned what other’s may think of his height –the very value he ignored earlier in the episode. Barbot still goes out with him.
This is the start of Futurama’s tenth season (or thirteenth depending on how you count them), but the show began twenty-six years ago this December. And like The Simpsons before it, it has very much been showing its age through this Hulu run. The tall jokes and Pacific Rim as a reference point –even the notion of the kaiju movie using a man in a suit rather than visual effects- speaks a bit to a tired and possibly out-of-touch creative team. The premise of this show remains one of limitless possibilities (I would argue more-so than The Simpsons), so it is even more a bad sign to see it repeating itself on one front, grasping at straws on another. I hope those proclivities are not totally representative of the shape of the season to come.
And, continuing the tradition, some stray observations:
  • Whatever the context, I will always appreciate Fry and Leela being cute like they are at the start of this episode. Sorry Bender.
  • I’m not sure if Barbot is meant to be a specific parody of a celebrity. Her name could suggest either Barbie (Margot Robbie?) or Brigette Bardot, and honestly given some of the other references of this episode, the latter wouldn’t surprise me.
  • Obviously of course this episode’s premise had to account for the fact we’ve seen Bender’s legs are extendable numerous times, so a bullshit explanation of this only lasting a few seconds at time had to be added on. “Lethal Inspection” had to answer for the same kind of glaring inconsistency, but at least it was so much better an episode.
  • The Robot Devil’s latest evil scheme is health insurance, which may have been a hard-hitting joke at one time -now it just reads as too obvious. Same goes for that textually ironic anti-D-roid ad that he does. It feels both antiquated in its satire and a little desperate -as though aware of the fact it is just padding out the episode’s runtime.
  • Calculon is playing the President in a movie, perhaps a sequel to The Magnificent Three from “That’s Lobstertainment!” in which of course he was the Vice President. Also the sad irony of a parody called All the President’s Bots appearing on this show the day that we lost Robert Redford…
  • Once again I feel it’s a bad sign when the show is more interested in recycling or referencing old jokes over coming up with new ones. That bit with Bender obscuring the big reveal in the movie each time it is needlessly repeated is of course the same gag from “I, Roommate” (also involving Calculon) way back in season one.
  • The Godzeebo knock-off of Godzillo bit also feels like a touch of lampshading to the show apparently not being able to use the name ‘Godzilla’. It’s a pretty laboured meta joke and not one that’s even all that interesting an observation.
  • They were able to get Guillermo del Toro to come into the recording booth to say two words. If the show’s going to get a special guest of that calibre, they really ought to use him more.
  • I’m sorry to say this is the worst episode of Futurama that David X. Cohen has a writing credit on, especially disappointing after his “All the Way Down” was such a strong highlight of the Hulu run thus far.
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